There was no way it could have been a coincidence. I opened the mailbox to find a notice from the Australian government warning me of the terrible peril that cats posed to native wildlife. Just days before there were a spate of reports from New Zealand playing up a recommendation by a prominent Kiwi to ban pet cats. The worst was confirmed by an article in the New York Times proclaiming “that cuddly kitty Is deadlier than you think”. That public relations buildup made it definite. Some environmental lobby group had a new cause to push. The war on cats had begun. As the New York Times pointed out they are killing birds! Birds!

In a report that scaled up local surveys and pilot studies to national dimensions, scientists from the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute and the Fish and Wildlife Service estimated that domestic cats in the United States — both the pet Fluffies that spend part of the day outdoors and the unnamed strays and ferals that never leave it — kill a median of 2.4 billion birds and 12.3 billion mammals a year, most of them native mammals like shrews, chipmunks and voles rather than introduced pests like the Norway rat.

Suddenly reports that President Obama was learning to shoot took on a new significance. He was getting ready to meet the hidden danger. Not far from the chilling NYT report detailing the dangers of cats was an article by Jared Diamond in the same paper explaining the menacing nature of the shower bath.

The other morning, I escaped unscathed from a dangerous situation. No, an armed robber didn’t break into my house, nor did I find myself face to face with a mountain lion during my bird walk. What I survived was my daily shower.

You see, falls are a common cause of death in older people like me. (I’m 75.) Among my wife’s and my circle of close friends over the age of 70, one became crippled for life, one broke a shoulder and one broke a leg in falls on the sidewalk. One fell down the stairs, and another may not survive a recent fall.

Wow, that was a close call. But the danger lurking in the shower was as nothing to the perils you find inside the Capitol. “Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, while lamenting the partisanship of congressional Republicans who grilled her about the Benghazi attack, encouraged Republicans not to imitate the unwillingness to compromise evinced by terrorists in North Africa.” She compared the GOP lawmakers to terrorists.

“I mean, we were just talking about extremists who think it’s only their way, they are the ones who have the truth, none of the rest of us have any kind of claim on what is real in their views,” she continued. “And so it’s important in our democracies – like Australia, like the United States – that yes, be passionate, be intense about your feelings, but at the end of the day you’ve got to serve the people who sent you there, and that requires compromise.”

It takes a shrewd statesman to see Republicans as the terrorists they truly are. An ordinary person might have thought they were merely testosterone deficient politicians.

The perils that are now detected in Fluffy, or in the shower, or among Republicans in Congress are in stark but perhaps appropriate contrast to the almost unconcerned attitude the administration takes towards terrorism. Dewayne Wickham at USA Today writes that America is now backing a doomed French attempt to prevent al-Qaeda from taking over vast swathes of Africa. It’s campaign in Mali may be doomed. So? Ho hum. Like what’s new? Anything interesting on TV tonight?

Only the French intervention in its former colony has turned the tide in the battle for control of Mali, which shares its border with seven fragile African states that could easily be threatened if Mali fails to defeat its Islamic militants. Many of these fighters were once mercenaries in the pay of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi. When Gadhafi’s regime was toppled in a popular uprising that received significant military and financial assistance from a U.S.-led coalition, they returned to Mali, heavily armed and champing at the bit to overrun its American-backed government.

Though France has blunted that effort, it doesn’t have the military resources to sustain its fight against Mali’s jihadists without help from the U.S. military. For now, that amounts to the use of giant transport planes to ferry French troops into Mali, and planes to refuel French combat aircrafts that are pummeling the militants’ positions….

“Those who sow the wind, reap the whirlwind,” said Charles Stith, a former U.S. ambassador to Tanzania, of the widening attacks by Islamic militants in Northern Africa.

“In our exuberance to depose the Libyan despot, Gadhafi, we didn’t think through the potential bad consequences,” said Stith, director of the African Presidential Center at Boston University, who is in regular contact with African leaders. “Gadhafi was only able to stay in power as long as he did because of the mercenary force he mobilized. It was clear to many folks in Africa that once he was gone, they would go somewhere else on the continent.” In the end, a multinational air campaign destroyed much of Gadhafi’s military hardware and demoralized his troops, who eventually were overrun by rebel forces.

Thank God wiser heads have got their priorities straight. The ignorant Bush might have panicked over terrorism but real intellectuals now in charge understand that global warming, big gulp softdrinks, cats and Republicans in Congress are the far greater threat.

But maybe the leadership is smarter than we think. Suppose the Obama administration doesn’t actually believes that global warming threatens the earth. He may be saying so because the problems facing the world have now grown so dire that the wise leaders must distract the population from the inevitable, like a child being sung a lullaby on a sinking ship. So they talk about carbon credits and cats.

You’ve watched the movies. The ones where a bunch of savvy journalists discover that the Federal Government has known for years that the Planet Nibiru is on a course to create a giant tidal wave and have kept the secret from the world’s billions to prevent panic. Same as they have concealed the existence of aliens or visitors from another dimension.

It’s for our own good.

A scientist who showed me his book draft argues that “the second half of the 20th century was the most benign period in human history.” A superpower nuclear standoff brought peace, there was cheap energy from oil and the food supply increased faster than population growth, partly as a consequence of an uptick in the the temperature. It was sweet.

But the good times are over. He argues that food demand is now once again outstripping supply, the world is starting to cool having the effect of wiping Canada from the list of grain suppliers, oil prices have tripled since 2004 and superpower world peace has been dismantled. War will overtake us soon. So we must at all events bury our heads in the sand.

They corrupted the scientific establishment of the exceptional and merely special nations, rotted the fabric of society and degraded the moral compass of that keeps all those good nations on course.

The result of long term trends, he argues, is that not only is global civilization in big trouble but some think it’s essential to deny it. The political elites have a vested interest in distracting us. So they are wisely diverting our attention to apparently innocent objects like felines and acts of hygeine. After reading through the first chapters of the manuscript, it was so devastating all one could do to keep from pitching oneself into the harbor was to buck up. “Be British, Richard. Be British.” But wait a moment. I’m not even British. If only half of the bad news is true its clear our minds need diversion. There’s fluorine. As a great patriot once said:

Do you realize that in addition to fluoridating water, why, there are studies underway to fluoridate salt, flour, fruit juices, soup, sugar, milk, ice cream? Ice cream, Mandrake? Children’s ice cream!…You know when fluoridation began?…1946. 1946, Mandrake. How does that coincide with your post-war Commie conspiracy, huh? It’s incredibly obvious, isn’t it? A foreign substance is introduced into our precious bodily fluids without the knowledge of the individual, and certainly without any choice.

Trust in our leaders, friends. Trust in Hillary. They know what is good for us. There’s a deep, wise reason for Benghazi.

Actually, I have always distrusted cats… dogs are better friends and will work for almost free. Have you ever heard of a sheep cat or a guide cat? No you haven’t. Useless beasties.
More power to the government…. so much smarter than I am..
ta

Actually, you’ll have to pry my guns from my cold dead hands first. I figure the gun battle will give the cats a head start.

I had a pretty hard fall last night when I slipped on a patch of ice. I landed on my right hip and right hand. While I was laying there the thought occurred to me that if I was 20 years older I probably would have broken the hip. My hip feels fine, but my hand hurt like hell. Today about 1/3 of it is a vivid shade of purple, but the swelling has gone down some and it doesn’t hurt as bad.

“A scientist who showed me his book draft argues that “the second half of the 20th century was the most benign period in human history.” A superpower nuclear standoff brought peace, there was cheap energy from oil and the food supply increased faster than population growth, partly as a consequence of an uptick in the the temperature.”

The second half of the 20th century may have been the high point in human history (I was so lucky to have been born a Californian in 1953). However a price paid during that period of prosperity was always being 20 minutes away from thermonuclear annihilation.

It was a miracle that we survived the Cold War.

Right now, it seems that almost everything is on the very verge of going to hell but at least we do not have Soviet H-bombs hanging over our heads. Is this an improvement?

Wretchard also said:

“I opened the mailbox to find a notice from the Australian government warning me of the terrible peril that cats posed to native wildlife.”

The Australian government has an “odd” attitude towards domestic cats. To some extent this is understandable because cats have had a negative impact on native Australian bird life. When I lived in Australia, my wife and I acquired a grey kitten from the RSPCA. He was in a large pen filled with about 30 kittens but stood out as the most handsome and intelligent cat. Cats are sort of like wands in the Harry Potter books, i.e. just as the wand chooses the wizard, the cat should chose the owner. Our cat chose us when we found him at the RSPCA and he was easily the best cat I ever owned. He had almost human intelligence. The Australian countryside is an extremely hostile environment for cats and I’m convinced that Darwinian natural selection has gone into overdrive in making the Australian cat the world’s toughest and most intelligent cat. After my employment ended in Australia, I returned to California and we brought our cat with us. It so happened that he like most Australian cats had the Feline Immune Deficiency Virus (FIV) that damaged his immune system. I suspect the Australian government is using the FIV virus to reduce the feral cat population much like they used the Myxomatosis virus to reduce the rabbit population. It must have cost me about $10,000 to keep my Australian cat alive due to all of the veterinarian expenses. Eventually he died naturally from cancer at the age of 20 years. I scattered his ashes on the family plot overlooking the Pacific Ocean. I now own an American cat that we got using the same kitten buying strategy, this time from the Humane Society. She’s a very affectionate cat but no Einstein when compared to our Australian cat (he was a tough act to follow).

I had an interesting discussion with a colleague two years ago. She is somewhat to the left of Hillary but the right of Mao. This was during the heat of the initial Tea Party movement and she made a comment about mathematical illiteracy. We are both scientists, and I felt it was reasonable to ask her what money represented, which seems like a pretty important concept. Most people come up with some definition of produced value, but her explanation was completely purchasing power. I think most of the heads in the sand will remain until the subterranean food ceases to be delivered. They have long ceased being concerned watching the decreasing numbers of workers going out to produce it.

SBW (aka Roughcoat)(#5) My mixed Sheppard/Rottweiler thinks they are Ninja, often barking at the empty lot across the street, I have only seen them once, appear several minutes later scurrying from the tall grass into the storm drain, very sneak those enemies of the state! Luckily I am not Iranian or I would surely think them jooos.

Yes, utterly insane and inexcusable. However if one is getting nicked $300 a pop in vet bills every 6 months for 20 years then the math is 300 * 40 = 12000. In the beginning, I told my wife if the cat’s medical costs ever went over $500 then it was the black pill. However he always stayed under the limit. As I was being bled white by this process, my veterinarian told me that this certified lunatic paid $20,000 for a kidney transplant on their FIV positive cat. I loved my cat like a child but love has its limits.

So “Look a squirrel!” has devolved to “Nobody really needs an assault kitty.”

And the Hildabeast is still going on about the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy. There is nothing new under the sun, except maybe those fresnel lens stick-ons. Like she hasn’t been looking left for fifty years even without them.

We are very near the end of civilization, but that’s the good news, because the bad news is it’s behind us.

–

egg @ 11: cats …

Do you know about them six-toed Maine Coon Cats? Sound like the cousins to your Australian kitty.

“The second half of the 20th century may have been the high point in human history (I was so lucky to have been born a Californian in 1953). However a price paid during that period of prosperity was always being 20 minutes away from thermonuclear annihilation.

It was a miracle that we survived the Cold War.

Right now, it seems that almost everything is on the very verge of going to hell but at least we do not have Soviet H-bombs hanging over our heads. Is this an improvement?”

It’s funny you should mention that. I have been spending the past few weeks finishing work on a manuscript for a new book on particular strike/reconnaissance/interceptor aircraft that was right in the thick of things in those days, particularly in the early 1960s. I have been spending a lot of time reading though the Foreign Relations of the United States to get some insight in the decision-making process within the Kennedy Administration. The preserved memos and letters are most illuminating.

What has struck me has been the striking parallels between Kennedy and Obama, once you get down past the carefully constructed hagiography of “Camelot.” The same self-absorption, empty and self-righteous posturing, pandering, and crassly cynical and short-sighted political calculations are all there, mirrored within an echo chamber of the “best and the brightest” with no practical experience to question their ingenious and impressive sets of assumptions about how things are supposed to work. Those with the experience and perspective quickly find themselves sidelined cut out of any meaningful input or dialogue. The same demands to conform to a predetermined narrative or outcome are also present.

Especially when you look at just how close we came to a general war, particularly over Berlin, I share the same wonderment about how mankind ever survived those days. But perhaps there was a hidden blessing within a bipolar world, with both sides armed to the teeth with thousands of multi-megaton weapons each.

They say that nothing concentrates the mind like the prospect of imminent harm. It seems that even an Obama, facing that literal abyss, would experience an “oh, $hit” moment, back off, and make an attempt to do something intelligent. But without the unavoidable, unacceptable consequence of following a series of stupid decisions, the slide is slower, more insidious, and harder to reverse but the outcome is no less real. They screw up, lose their jobs (at worst), and go hang out in Davos. We pay.

My favorite cats have not lasted long enough to need expensive veterinary care, both disappearing. One cat would come when I whistled and would follow me anywhere. I took her on a hike once when it was pretty hot out. Cats don’t vent heat very well, their tongues much smaller in surface area than a dog. She kind of collapsed and had to be carried to car, where I wrapped her in wet towel until she got over her heat exhaustion. My next most favorite cat disappeared from my current neighborhood. This cat, an Abyssinian, would fetch those small foamy cat toys until she was exhausted, bringing it back, dropping at my feet, and purring to beat the band until I tossed it again. She would do this usually until I got bored. I don’t know specifically what happened to her, but one night the dog alerted me to a commotion in the front yard. Looking out the window I saw two coyotes playing tug-o-war with the neighbors cat. She’d already been gone awhile, but I was kind of confident she would have come home if she could. My co-workers cat got snatched by an owl from his back yard one evening…demonstrating birds are predators too.

Three years ago my cat Reggie, who was three years old at the time, came down with acute kidney failure. He was already in bad shape when I took him to the vet, and he ended up spending four days in the animal hospital hooked up to an IV to flush out his kidneys.

He made a complete recovery, but apparently it was a near-run thing. When I took him in for his annual checkup last year, one of the techs said, “It’s the miracle kitty!” Both the vet and I were completely mystified as to what happened. He’s an indoor cat and I’m careful about keeping things like cleaning products, pesticides, and medications away from him. She even sent a sample of his food to a lab to be tested, but it came back negative.

Anyway, the bill for the hospital stay and follow-up visit came to about $1000, which I paid out of pocket. By comparison, what would a similar human hospital stay cost? Veterinary medicine is pretty much a purely free-market endeavour, while human medicine is burdened with insurance, government regulations and mandates, malpractice suits, and cost-shifting. There’s a lesson there. Health care costs could be drastically reduced by encouraging more genuine free-market competition.

I recall hearing of hunters saying that if they ran across a cat in the wild they always shot it. They figured it was eating things it should not, like game birds.

And I recall reading where in the hills around Los Angeles the authorities objected to people taking dogs with them on hikes on the basis it would alarm and otherwise disturb the local wildlife. The local wildlife were unavailable for comment, so what they thought of the numerous coyotes indigenous to the area was not reported. Presumably, it was assumed that the coyotes could do all the wildlife alarming they wanted and it was part of the natural order of things.

My Ridgeback/Labrador (Ridgeador?) had a fairly ambivalent attitude toward cats, apparently having met some in the animal shelter, until a group of them moved in next door and began making forays into our yard. She now regards all of them as hostile invaders to be repulsed at all costs, where ever they are found.

Eggplant #7:

“It was a miracle that we survived the Cold War.”

Actually, I think it was a miracle that we survived the Cold War and could still produce the idiot leaders we have today. It’s like Albert Einstein, Vannear Bush, and Kelly Johnson coming up with the scripts for “My Mother The Car.” And I suspect we could have gone at it hammer and tongs in 1960 and today everybody probably would be better off. I am sure that Russia would be better off; another 30 years of Militant Mediocrity was more destructive than any number of nukes.

Highlander #13:

If it’s the F-4 I have something interesting to tell you about that airplane.

Neither is Benedict XVI: “Pope Benedict is a Cat-holic”: “The Vatican doesn’t allow pets these days. They say it’s a security thing. But there’s ongoing debate over whether the pope shares his papal apartments with two cats, one of them a former stray he owned before. The Vatican won’t confirm or deny, so I’m surprised nobody has checked for cat hair on his robes.”

Cats are non-natural, introduced predators to NZ. They have decimated the populations of the ground-living, flightless parrot, the Kakapo. Simply neuter all on the island now and forbid their import. Similarly, do not import mongooses, or any other non native predators.

Oh boy, I can see unintended consequences if they get rid of cats.
Farmers and ranchers at lest in my area keep “barn cats” the keep the population of animals that eat or contaminate grains, seeds, and carry diseases down. A couple of cats or a terrier or two patrolling your garden are much more effective than a scarecrow. One part time rancher that I knew had barn cats and he kept their population under control by neutering the toms. He did it himself instead of using the service of a vet. It involved the use of welding gloves, a rubber boot, a razor blade, and antiseptic. It made me cringe and I’m allergic to cats.

RSPCA = “Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals” which is the Australian analog to the American SPCA.

My Australian cat was a very ordinary “pound kitty” probably descended from Australian farm cats. It is my claim that natural selection in the Australian countryside has turned ordinary cats that originally came from England into super cats. To add to this irony, most Australian ranchers (homesteaders) regard cats as moving targets to improve their shooting accuracy. An Australian cat living in the wild has to avoid getting shoot, taken by enormous wedge-tailed eagles, dingos, incredibly poisonous snakes and spiders, extreme temperature, almost no water and high octane FIV courtesy of the Australian government. Years ago, I lived in Brisbane, Queensland and it gets really hot there with extreme humidity. My cat would cool himself by laying on his back in the shade and sticking his legs straight up.

stephen b @ 15 said:

“Looking out the window I saw two coyotes playing tug-o-war with the neighbors cat.”

A coyote almost got my Australian cat (took a hunk out of his rear right leg). My cat almost exceeded his $500 limit getting repaired for that (He should have known better than letting a coyote sneak up on him).

Funny thing about my Australian cat is that despite being as tough as they come, deep down inside, he wanted to be a mommy. He actually adopted these feral kittens and would lay curled up around them like he was their mother. Never thought a tom cat would do that.

rickl @ 16 said:

“Anyway, the bill for the hospital stay and follow-up visit came to about $1000, which I paid out of pocket. By comparison, what would a similar human hospital stay cost?”

I’ve made the same observation. We’re paying slightly over cost when a vet works on a pet. When dealing with a human physician, we’re paying for the health insurance markup, lawyer blood suckers pursuing malpractice law suits, the drug industry, crooked politicians and all the rest.

Again the memory comes back to me that both China and Russia each liquidated a significant fraction of their respective populations during the middle four or five decades of the 20th century, and still managed to maintain dominance over their neighbors.

Well, yes… eventually the Soviet system collapsed, but it may have been premature to pronounce it dead. Miracle Max seems to have demonstrated it was “only Mostly Dead“.

China seems to have slacked off lately, and left the wholesale butcher business, in favor of more precisely targeted murder and only just general intimidation and oppression, while encouraging the people to be productive, which cannot be particularly sustained by dead subjects.

At least two factors seem to be accelerating toward a general precipitation of trends: (1) The Maoists and Stalinists appointed by the Obama administration to positions beyond any accounting to Congress are feverishly promulgating regulations that promise to bring this economy to its knees; US treasury policy is making the dollar AND the stock market worthless, at a dead run.

(2) The leadership of both Russia and China cannot be happy about the U.S. dollar being deliberately torpedoed by Obama. It is the same strategy the German government (Weimar Republic) used to frustrate the heavy reparations dictated by France and UK by the treaty that ended WWI. Increase the money supply with currency of no intrinsic value without any increase in government-held precious metals or any other thing that could “back the currency.” It’s like forcing your creditors to accept Monopoly money AND keep supplying you with electricity, groceries, gas, and restaurant meals. Pretty soon they’re going to be seriously annoyed about the deal.

The “Progressives” in the U.S. are determined to make this nation a subject to the United Nations, which comprises now mostly nations whose leaders climbed to power on mountains of corpses of their own citizens whom they murdered. The question is whether the United Nations will get to dismember the U.S., or will it be China and Russia bickering over the mortal remains…

So cats are the newest enemy of the State. Did any of the brainiacs who put this stuff out ever sit down and talk to a cat? Did any of them ever wonder what a cat was thinking as he lay on a windowsill in the sun, purring contentedly? I did, and asked him, and this is what he said.

I sit on sunny window sills and dream of mice and men
And how we’re all the same in many ways
Outside a bird is warbling every song he knows again
That is how he spends his minutes and his days
A squirrel is racing up a tree, he seems to have such fun
While I behind the window pane look on
Not envious or jealous as I sit here in the sun
For come the end of day they’ll all be gone
To where I have no knowledge and in truth I do not care
Tomorrow at the window I’ll be here
To look out at the world so bright, so elegant, so fair
A world so far and yet again so near
I know this place is made for me and all who share my world
For God has made us, each and every one
And I content to sit and watch, so delicately curled
Upon my window sill in golden sun

To the Honorable, the Members of the Senate of the Sixty-sixth General Assembly:

I herewith return, without my approval, Senate Bill No. 93, entitled, “An Act to Provide Protection to Insectivorous Birds by Restraining Cats.” This is the so-called “Cat Bill.” I veto and withhold my approval from this Bill for the following reasons:

It would impose fines on owners or keepers who permitted their cats to run at large off their premises. It would permit any person to capture or call upon the police to pick up and imprison cats at large. It would permit the use of traps. The bill would have statewide application — on farms, in villages, and in metropolitan centers.

This legislation has been introduced in the past several sessions of the Legislature, and it has, over the years, been the source of much comment — not all of which has been in a serious vein. It may be that the General Assembly has now seen fit to refer it to one who can view it with a fresh outlook. Whatever the reasons for passage at this session, I cannot believe there is a widespread public demand for this law or that it could, as a practical matter, be enforced.

Furthermore, I cannot agree that it should be the declared public policy of Illinois that a cat visiting a neighbor’s yard or crossing the highway is a public nuisance. It is in the nature of cats to do a certain amount of unescorted roaming. Many live with their owners in apartments or other restricted premises, and I doubt if we want to make their every brief foray an opportunity for a small game hunt by zealous citizens — with traps or otherwise. I am afraid this Bill could only create discord, recrimination and enmity. Also consider the owner’s dilemma: To escort a cat abroad on a leash is against the nature of the cat, and to permit it to venture forth for exercise unattended into a night of new dangers is against the nature of the owner. Moreover, cats perform useful service, particularly in rural areas, in combating rodents — work they necessarily perform alone and without regard for property lines.

We are all interested in protecting certain varieties of birds. That cats destroy some birds, I well know, but I believe this legislation would further but little the worthy cause to which its proponents give such unselfish effort. The problem of cat versus bird is as old as time. If we attempt to resolve it by legislation who knows but what we may be called upon to take sides as well in the age-old problems of dog versus cat, bird versus bird, or even bird versus worm. In my opinion, the State of Illinois and its local governing bodies already have enough to do without trying to control feline delinquency.

For these reasons, and not because I love birds the less or cats the more, I veto and withhold my approval from Senate Bill No. 93.

Highlander #13:
“It’s funny you should mention that. I have been spending the past few weeks finishing work on a manuscript for a new book on particular strike/reconnaissance/interceptor aircraft that was right in the thick of things in those days, particularly in the early 1960s. ”
Perhaps you’re talking about the “YF-12A”/OXCART? Another Kelley Johnson product…

And just how did those interloping cats get to NZ and Australia? Ahem. . . . probably brought there by INTERLOPING humans of a certain kind. Maybe it’s those humans who should die out. Oh yeah, they probably will.

“we didn’t think through the potential bad consequences”
That should be chiseled in stone over every legislature court and school.

If the cats are eliminated we should have ready the articles on the totally unexpected rise in typhus and plague that will be waiting to fill our otherwise empty and uneventful days.

Cats should not kill birds. That is the job of Green Windmills.

In their dreams a dog sees you as a 500 lb super dog that your dog admires and tags along with. In the cat’s dream they are a 300 lb tiger and you are a terrified mouse running for cover. Cats have the virtue of honesty. You know exactly what they think of you at any moment.

Walt 27,
Cats are happiest in the window when they are warm and they can see other creatures freezing outside.

Bill Befort 30,
A man that smart should run for President. Then again he sounds like one of those nay saying Rethuglicans. Given time I am confident that the people of Illinois can come up with someone far more sophisticated and accomplished.

Cat Ladies are a solid bloc I think for the Democrats. Is it a sign of confidence that the ideologues are now serially hurting all their useful idiot groups? Blacks are getting kicked in the teeth by immigration. Gays and Jews or for that matter Gay Jews are being delivered to Islamist mercy. Unions are being decimated by deindustrialization and bankruptcy. Is there a policy here or is it more random noise?

Most of the world’s felines are in serious trouble, but not the domestic feline. It alone of all the cat species has mastered the art of learning to how to use humans to further its own aims. Cats live with us without ever really becoming domesticated. It’s a neat trick. The dog never mastered it having become completely our creature and creation. I think only the pig approaches the cat in its mastery of using humans, but even then, cats win because they’re still more endearing than pigs.

I’m currently on cats 8 and 9 in my life. They’re fascinating little creatures, and no one will make me give them up.

“You see, falls are a common cause of death in older people like me. (I’m 75.) Among my wife’s and my circle of close friends over the age of 70, one became crippled for life, one broke a shoulder and one broke a leg in falls on the sidewalk. One fell down the stairs, and another may not survive a recent fall.”

I think it would be quite useful for elderly and not-so-elderly people to engage in strength/resistance training. Falls occur due to physical weakness/frailty and this weakness can be addressed by strength training. The training would also help to increase bone density and lessen the risk of fractures.

Actually, it is going to be on the granddaddy of the F-4, the F-101 Voodoo.

In the case of Berlin, Kennedy, ever the pragmatist, wanted an expanded set of warfighting options other than “massive retailation.”. Carl Kaysen came up with a plan to disarm the Soviets with a relatively limited preemptive nuclear strike using a force of about 40 B-47 and B-52 bombers going in at low level. At that time, 28 F-101A and F-101C aircraft had SIOP assignments from their base in England. Had this gone forward, they would certainly have gone in ahead and swept clear the approaches through the Baltics and perhaps the Leningrad Air District, although that would have been a one-way mission. Fortunately, better heads prevailed. I think that it was a number of situations like that that might have begun to convince Kennedy and his advisers that world affairs was not some parlor game, but that it involved tremendous stakes with very dangerous and unpredictable people. Despite many mistakes that followed, I suppose that this is what gave a generation of statesmen the impetus to be intentional about building some design margin into the international order. Without the stark reality of immediate and grave consequences for poor reasoning and hollow actions, arrogance and domestic political calculations rule the day now as they did in the first year or so of the Kennedy administration. I’ve been fighting a bad cold, so my previous post may have been even less cogent than usual, but that was the point I was trying to make. In the Cold War. The very real threat of incineration highlighted many problems and did not allow any evasion of responsibility in finding a solution. That same set of conditions is not at work today. Hence….

I think that environmentalism can only be understood as bad religion. The cult of the pagan earth goddess, Gaia. The hierophants of the faith have determined that Gaia is angry and demands sacrifice. They have willingly offered her your children by their sacred rite of abortion, but they believe that it will not be enough. Thus the cats.

These people need to be fought at every turn. Their demented beliefs need to be exposed and mocked for what they are: the superstitions of paleolithic illiterates, and nothing more.

Hasn’t there been a law in Oz for years now that prohibits cats from being outside? When I lived in NSW, we always kept the cats in the house because of the threat to native birds; not sure if it was just a common sense thing or if there was an actual law on the books.

Regardless, I do actually see where the Kiwis are coming from on this, especially since so many of their native bird species are flightless. Not sure why they’re singling cats out though, dogs hunt and eat birds too. Just ask anyone that’s ever owned a rat terrier.

There’s lots of truth in what you say about keeping active. At 75 my dad got thrown for a loop by an angry bull, but he’s an active rancher. His shoulder sustained some damage, resulting in a classic scene at the country doc’s:

Some city folks abandoned a young cat near his farmhouse, though, and luckily that cat adopted him. They kept each other company while he convalesced. He’s a great cat, too, and his eagerness in catching things like rodents and birds works beneficial wonders for the garden.

Yes, we do have coyotes in these parts (southern Virginia) nowadays, and one day they might catch up with the cat when age slows him. But right now he’s a ball of thunder and a great gift for which I’m thankful. Dad’s got a ready friend.

(English subtitles; and Marie Claude will notice at once that the French voiceover is substandard French– obviously not the work of a native speaker– but, as Mme. Clinton would say, what difference does it make?)

“Dewayne Wickham at USA Today writes that America is now backing a doomed French attempt to prevent al-Qaeda from taking over vast swathes of Africa. It’s campaign in Mali may be doomed. So? Ho hum. Like what’s new? Anything interesting on TV tonight?”

Really? doesn’t seem so, Panetta only decided to give us a hand last saturday when Gao was freed, all by our means, we only had a old tanker to refuel our planes.

I bet that he was expecting how the things would turn for us, if we had failed, that would have been the end of the “big enterprise” for us (since a Mali intervention was in Pentagon books from last year, but that would have been launched next september, Hollande decided to advance it when Bamako was on the verge to be taken by the advancing “jihadists”, also more certainly because the Malian interimary president asked him for a help, he was expecting another coup d’état, and being removed, by the milititary “left” in service in the capital) and I can imagine the Anglo-saxons papers holding us as laughing stocks.

Also there’s another NYT article that said that Hollande told that he will pull back the french troops, hmm the facts aren’t showing that, tanks, armored VHB… heavy materials arrived from France , it’s not for parading in a liberated Mali, it’s for the next big piece, the war in Kidal and the mounts of Adrar des Ifogas, as large as half of France at the north-eastern malian border with Algeria

The Malians don’t trust the Tuaregs, that fought with Ansar dine movement, that lately reverted their jacket, for a possible negociated peace. These were also subjugating them in Timbuktu and Gao. The Tuaregs are also those that trafficked, drugs, “malboro”, hostages… So between the Tuaregs that had a relevant revendication for being represented in Malian government and those that are opportunists,in joining AQMI, there’s little difference, and if hunted, they’ll be the difficult preys. It’s where American drones will be useful. This going to become like Afhanistan there

A long time ago my mom told me about Adlai Stevenson sticking up for the cats, so it was fun to read that statement in his own words!

We’ve spent a lot of money on our ancient cat. As has been said, it adds up, like a car that keeps seeming to be worth repairing (we have old cars too).

We paid $500 for a surgery that fixed our cat Chester’s thyroid problem. We are lucky that our vet is experienced at this surgery–it usually works much better than either medication or the “cadillac” treatment of iodine radiation, which is really expensive, around $1500(the radiation treatment works too well–it often destroys all or most of the thyroid and then you have the opposite problem and have to add medicine to the mix, whereas with the surgery you can see what you are doing and take out the part that has grown too large and leave a normal amount–yes, cats apparently have very primitive thyroids compared to ours).

That was several years ago, and completely cleared up that problem. Then Chester came down with diabetes, so we give him insulin shots. You get used to it. It’s not cheap but we like this cat a lot. Then the kidneys started getting worn down so we put him on the special food, low protein kd (also not cheap). I asked the vet if this was a stopgap measure or what. He said it depends if he’ll eat it! If he’ll eat the special food, he might last for years. He has lasted for years–not a picky eater, happily.

Now he has a tumor in his ear. At first the vet had us go to the “ivory tower” vets at the animal hospital, where the proposed treatments were too expensive even for us to consider plus they didn’t make sense. They told us they had to do an ultrasound to check on his heart murmur before we could do the surgery on the tumor. I said he’s probably too old for surgery anyway, just give me antibiotics for the infection and we’ll see if it clears up and then think about it. Hospital vet said the infection would not clear up with a tumor there. But it did.

Our vet did a biopsy–he uses special gas anaesthetic that he can calibrate to keep the cat out for only as long as needed. The tumor is apparently benign, so we just manage it with topical antibiotic and it is a minor annoyance for Chester. He shakes bits of the thing out of his ear once in a while. The vet approvingly calls this “nature’s way.” Chester had a bladder infection recently which cleared up with the use of antibiotics and doesn’t seem to have been linked to any of the serious things one worries about with old cats. He must be about on his ninth life by now.

Chester is 22. He can’t jump up on the couch anymore but we made him a stairway of pillows and he walks up them to his place on the couch and down them to his other place by the hearth, still eats well, manages the stairs to use his litter box, and still sometimes goes outside, usually just to sit on the porch but he will do a walk around the house if we go with him. We are all awaiting spring when it will be easier to be active. We are really attached to him and will miss him very much when he is gone. We appreciate him all day every day, as I work from home and my husband is retired. So for us it has been a pretty good investment.

Ah, the romance of “native wildlife,” “native plants,” and “native peoples.” If only all people would return to the Olduvai Gorge, wonderful Gaia would soon sort out the rest. It’s so unnatural for human beings to wander and carry things with them.

I think it would be quite useful for elderly and not-so-elderly people to engage in strength/resistance training. Falls occur due to physical weakness/frailty and this weakness can be addressed by strength training. The training would also help to increase bone density and lessen the risk of fractures.

And just how would that provide government jobs? No– the answer is to equip all showers with airbags activated by motion sensors. This would provide the opportunity for many bureaucratic careers ensuring that all new construction includes these new showers as well as requiring that showers built before the law be ‘upgraded’ within some totally arbitrary time limit. And the cost? Screw that. Who could possibly care about little mundane things like cost? And if even one person avoids getting a sprained pinky it will be worth it.

Just remember–all solutions must run through and be micro-managed by the government, otherwise its not really a solution. And to whatever extent a private solution might seem to be an answer, its really not because the government can always do it better. Thoughtcrime to the contrary is doubleplus ungood.

Well, I did not work much on the 101 when I was fixing airplanes, but here are a couple of stories related to me by a friend of mine.

Soon after he was elected the USAF was giving JFK an airshow. As some F-100’s were attacking a ground target, something whizzed by overhead. “What was that?” asked JFK. “Those were your F-101’s.” A general replied, and JFK said, “Well, bring them back! I want to see them again!”

During a review of what the US response would have been had the Cuban Missile Crisis gone hot, an F-10 pilot briefed some senior officers, using a map of Cuba. “I would have followed this course and dropped a bomb on that missile complex right there.”

They asked, “What about that SAM site that you would have to fly over?” The pilot replied, “Sir, that SAM site would have been destroyed by F-100’s 30 seconds before I got there.”

I worked with an RF-101 pilot who had flown in Vietnam. I asked him why they seemed to keep the RF-101’s around long after the RF-4C came out, even converting some F-101B’s to RF’s. He explained that the best camera in both the 101 and RF-4C was not the ones up in the nose but a vertical camera located between the engines. And on the RF-4C the engines set up a vibration that screwed up the pictures from that camera. On the 101 that problem did not exist, so they got better pictures from it.

By the way, some years back I wondered what it would take to convert an F-101B model kit into an F-101A. I got the Squadron book and carefully compared the two aircraft. I was surprised to find that with the exception of the 2nd cockpit and the afterburner configuration the two side profiles were identical. They did not “stretch” the 101A to make the 101B.

We had “Muffy” {Muffinitis} a tortoise shell, who failed to appear one day. We asked Lucy, the beagle/??? mix where she was. Lucy came back later in the day with a few bits of fur. Muffy was not as invincible as she thought.
tom

When I was a boy, living is a heavily wooded area, we had a Dark Black Stealth SEAL Cat named Matthew (DBSSC 1st Class). He was a deadly killer who loved to show off his success. So all we had to do was reward him for killing the right prey and scold him for killing the chipmunks! Chipmunks are sooooooooooooo cute! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RP19fnff_c

When he brought a cardinal, he got scolded. But when he brought a RAT, he got a nice slice of deli bought turkey breast. Farm raised is so much plumper than wild!!!

After a while you could not find a RAT within a mile of the house. But not everyone properly cares for their pets, so for them, my brother the vet does free spaying and neutering. (Too bad we can’t do the same to Obama Administration officials!)

There are a few interesting things about the RF-101. The definitive official history of the development of basic aircraft, written in 1957, is still classified although the appendices with many of the documents referenced in it have been released in the past few years. Go figure….

Like the original strategic fighter version, the RF-101 was developed for SAC originally, apparently for rapid pre/post-strike sorties to perform BDA and allocate “heavies” for follow-up strikes as needed. The camera fit was optimized for medium to high-altitude missions using a pair of large-format KA-1 cameras in the bay behind the cockpit. Each KA-1 shot on a 9″ x 18″ negative, but in the split vertical configuration you could combine the two and essentially work with a 9″ x 36″ swath. The cameras could be configured in 18″, 24″ and 36″ focal lengths. By the time it come into service in 1957, SAC had decided to get out of the fighter business and the aircraft were received by a somewhat underwhelmed TAC.

By the time things started getting hot in Cuba, RF-101s had flown low-level missions over Laos for about a year, but in this case “low level” meant about 1,500 to 4,500 feet AGL. The presence of SA-2 missiles in Cuba meant that they had to go in lower, 500 feet or less. The forward and tri-station cameras shot on a large 9′ x 9′ format but in trying to compensate for the image motion at very low level and around Mach 1, the result was often blurry photos and/or stripped mechanisms in the film magazines. The Navy was much more successful with the smaller, “faster” KA-45 cameras in their F8U-1P aircraft flying out of Guantanamo. However, when the need arose to positively verify if various items of support equipment were for nuclear or conventional systems, the small-format KA-45s (4.5″ x 4.5″)couldn’t hack it, while the U-2s just flew far too high to pick up that level of detail. The big KA-1s in the Voodoo could provide that resolution.

The final fix for the RF-101 was to put the Hycon KS-72 cameras and control systems that had been developed for the RF-4C into the Voodoo. These gave much improved performance but were also small format cameras, which proved very unpopular in Southeast Asia with interpreters and ground commanders alike. It turned out that with a few tweaks, the 18″ KA-1 fit in the RF-101C adapted pretty well to low level and remained in great demand. They basically ran missions with them in and around Vietnam until they had used up all of the available attrition replacements from USAFE, TAC, or anywhere else they could turn them up. Overall, the RF-4C was a far superior and more survivable platform but right up until the day they shut down 45th TRS operations in late 1970 the RF-101s remained very heavily tasked because the RF-4 lacked the large-format split vertical camera capability.

For an airplane that was a real pain in the a$$ during its development, in the end the USAF got its money’s worth!

Dogs are also natural born killers, but they have a superior and disarming ability to camouflage this dire aspect of their nature with genuine amiability. I had a border collie who was dumped as puppy in a farmer’s field and learned to fend quite capably for herself. She became an accomplished killer of small furry and feathered creatures. She annihilated the field mouse, rat, squirrel, and chipmunk populations in the area around my house. Epic (and clamorously ferocious) battles with racoons were frequent occurrences and she always triumphed in these encounters. The local possum collective didn’t stand a chance against her predatory wiles. Cats had best beware although I did manage to inculcate tolerance (albeit wary and reluctant) toward the neighborhood felines. She even stood off a pair of coyotes once, eschewing conflict perhaps (I suspected) because she recognized them as kindred spirits and possible mates. Excellent pack hunter that she was, she was quite scrupulous in bringing me, the Alpha male, the mangled remains of her kills, plopping them proudly at my feet, paying tribute. And smiling, wagging her tale, happy to share the hunt with her lord and master.

Not unexpectedly, she was quite correct in her behavior toward sheep, directing their movements with the force of her personality and her relentless border collie “eye,” but never ever physically harming them.

Dogs have the personality of Irish warriors, ebullient yet lethal. Cats have the personality of Hannibal Lector.

Do you think that as a part of EMPOWERING WOMEN that Kathleen Sibelius will stick it in the ear of Republicans by requiring that ObamaCare pay for Gardasil vaccinations and sterilization (tying one’s tubes so as to eliminate all those “female problems”) for 15 year old Hispanic girls as an integral part of their Quinceañera celebrations?

On the “war on cats” in particular: The most ardent animal rights activists want to eliminate pets altogether. PETA is/was at the forefront of this intended goal. The very name “PETA” is apparently meant to lure the many gullible animal lovers into supporting PETA’s goals, without those well-meaning fools not really knowing what said goals are.

Remember:

The intent of “Animal Rightists” is not to elevate other animals to the level of humans, but to lower humans to the level of all other animals.

It is no accident or coinicidence that the movement was started by Peter Singer via his book Animal Liberation. Singer is the “Bioethicist” who wants to make it OK to kill inconvenient toddlers and old people. “Bioethics” is that Orwellian term meant to grant absolution to monsters who want to “perfect” us. By making humans “just another animal,” putting down the “defective” ones becomes more feasible and acceptable.

Running an anti-cat campaign is meant to soften us up for eventual action. So far it’s not going over very well. May that continue to be the case.

Really, you are absolutely right. As I age I make myself do balance, range-of-motion and mobility exercises, including vaulting over barriers, like a dumbed-down basic training exercise. I intend to be able to do almost as well in my 70′s. My bone density, I was told, was typical for a 25-year-old (I am 65), and that is due to weight-bearing exercises I’ve done since my teens. Jared Diamond’s hysterics about what constitues “danger” can be counteracted by seniors being proactive about their personal fitness. And it doesn’t require that much time and energy for them to do this. Does the guy use a shower mat, I wonder?

Re # 6. rickl
“…My hip feels fine, but my hand hurt like hell….”
Sorry to hear it. May be the following will help in the future: try to fold into a ball and roll instead of futile attempt to stop the fall. And never, NEVER extend extremities – the probability is high they will be broken.
BTW, all martial training starts with (the above) lesson on how to fall without hurting oneself.

Re # 7. Eggplant
“…However a price paid during that period of prosperity was always being 20 minutes away from thermonuclear annihilation.”
I think the price was more imaginary than real. Mostly because the confrontation kept (or quickly removed) idiots with bright ideas away from top spots. Or, at least restricted their ability to act on their ideas. An example: Carter was removed, Obama (and Hillary and Kerry, and Gore, etc.) stays. And there is no external restriction on their activities, e.g. sky is the only limit.

“It was a miracle that we survived the Cold War.” Just the corollary to above.

“Chester is 22. He can’t jump up on the couch anymore but we made him a stairway of pillows and he walks up them to his place on the couch and down them to his other place by the hearth, still eats well, manages the stairs to use his litter box, and still sometimes goes outside, usually just to sit on the porch but he will do a walk around the house if we go with him.”

For me, the ethics of dealing with old pets is “too hard”. In the end, my Australian cat was almost blind and deaf and could barely keep his food down. On a nonverbal level, he and I were very much mind-to-mind. I was convinced that he would resent euthanasia (he was a fighter with an amazing will to live). Fortunately he died naturally from cancer and I did not have to make the tough choice. This attitude differs from my brother who is not shy about euthanizing pets as soon as he thinks they are in any sort of distress. Of course, the typical farmer/rancher attitude towards all livestock is the animal gets a bullet in the head when it is ready for slaughter or no longer useful. Oddly enough, my brother’s wife’s attitude towards pet euthanasia is diametrically opposed to my brother’s, i.e. let the animal live until it’s a giant bleeding ulcer and in agonizing pain. Again, I find this ethical problem too hard and glad that my cat didn’t force me to make the tough choice.

tomw @ 56 said:

“We had “Muffy” {Muffinitis} a tortoise shell, who failed to appear one day.”

FWIW; Here’s a rather restrained letter penned by a few jungle cats for the edification of the domestic pu$$ies who shed their crocodile tears (…For the children) even as they slink in the shadows of a litterbox [throne] full of regulatory stink designed to de-fang common Liberty…Tooth by tooth.

The main diet of cats around here is grasshoppers, they don’t catch and kill the birds very easy birds can fly better than a grasshopper. The creature that kills and eats the most birds is the Falcon kestrel.
The number one killer of cats, birds and wildlife is the automobile. I understand the auto has killed a lot of Humans as well.
I like cats, I thought mother gaeia wanted nature to take it’s course these folks are The same people who applaud the polar bears survival are the ones who are telling us cats are bad because, “They are predators doncha know” and hate a gun because “it’s designed too kill” like a bear isn’t?
Not content to simply have their heads up their ass they insist on the rest of us join them,